What the Hobby Lobby Ruling Means for Women

This morning, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby, deciding that the closely held company can be exempt from the contraceptive coverage mandated under the Affordable Care Act. After the decision was announced, we spoke with Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress, an independent nonpartisan educational institute "dedicated to improving the lives of Americans through progressive ideas and action," about her reaction to the news, where we go from here, and the what the ruling means for women.

What is your reaction to the Supreme Court's decision?

I find it outrageous. I find it bizarre that we have a situation in which the religious rights of employers trumps the interests—religious or otherwise—of employees.

I find it startling that five men on the Supreme Court decided that the right to contraception stands out as a health care need and that employers—closely held employers, which is an arbitrary rule they've made—can make the decisions on behalf of their employees.

What does this mean for women?

The court tries to establish some limitations to this decision. So they say closely held companies—I would remind folks that 90 percent of the businesses in the United States are closely held—I would say this is a far-reaching decision and obviously threatens the contraceptive rights of women. And the fact that women's contraception is considered separate and apart from health care needs–I think that's a political decision that the court is making.

We just had an event on women's leadership issues and how women's leadership rates lag in the U.S. behind other countries and I think this a demonstration of the importance of women speaking out more politically. I think these things wouldn't happen if people had a better understanding that women consider contraception a basic health care issue. And it isn't just women—this was established by the Institute of Medicine. First of all companies aren't people and don't have religious views and the fact that the court has issued a decision like this shows just how much further we have to go in terms of basic understandings of contraception as a health care issue.

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The ruling also means that counseling won't be covered as well, correct?

So the decision is that if you have an employer whose religion is offended by your health care decision—the court talks about contraception, but the ruling allows this for a broad swath of issues—[they can decide not to provide coverage]. Justice Ginsburg spoke out on her dissent from the bench. The truth is, this is the reading of a statute, so I hope we can change the statute, and clarify the fact that we should not just be giving preference to employers. I don't think anyone thought that when they were passing this law, but we're now finding ourselves with an activist court that is willing to read in protections for companies that they won't read in for employees.

I just find it startling. Say I'm a Hindu worker. Why do my employer's religious views trump mine? I don't understand why I don't have the religious protection that they do.

Some people have said that a ruling like this is a slippery slope—that other existing laws could be questioned on the grounds of religious freedom and LGBT rights denied. Can you comment on that?

There is nothing in this decision that protects LGBT rights. If an employer says "It offends me to offer protections for LBGT folks, I'm not going to do it," [they can].

Where do we go from here?

Well this isn't a constitutional interpretation; this is an interpretation of a statute, so I think we should try to change the statute. I think it should be clear in the law that employees have protections as well, not just employers, and women have to recognize that an issue like birth control is still a highly litigated issue.

Again, I will say five men on the Supreme Court—all the women were in dissent, there were four dissenters and three of them were women—have determined that contraception is just not that critical.

The reason why we have a court like this [is because] these justices have all been appointed by political process, so it's critical that women become more active in the political process to push back on decisions like this.

In your opinion, what should the government do now?

I hope the Obama administration will explore a full range of options to provide contraception and contraceptive coverage to women. And I'm hopeful when they do so that republicans don't immediately say no. Because that's a problem we've had. But I hope the Obama administration will be as expansive as possible within the law to provide women with contraception.